The news that Russian president Vladimir Putin will skip the Brics nations summit next month after “a mutual agreement” with President Cyril Ramaphosa is a momentous victory for the rule of law.
The announcement by the presidency yesterday ended months of speculation over whether the Russian leader would risk visiting SA while facing an international warrant of arrest.
It would have marked the first time that Putin would travel abroad since the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted him in March for war crimes related to the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
“By mutual agreement, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov,” said the presidency yesterday.
Whatever behind-the-scene negotiations that led to the deal are, the retreat by Putin is a significant affirmation that no one is above the law in SA, and perhaps credit to Ramaphosa for persuading him to back down.
This is precisely so because even as many sought to highlight the hypocrisy of the ICC, which is well established, SA is obligated under international and domestic laws to arrest Putin if he arrives here.
SA voluntarily joined the ICC while Russia and the US, for example, are not signatories to the Rome Statute.
The obligation on the part of SA was affirmed in 2015 when an ICC arrest warrant was out for then Sudanese president Omar al Bashir who attended an African Union assembly and the government declined to arrest him. The matter was ventilated in courts, which found that the failure to arrest Al-Bashir was inconsistent with both international and domestic law and therefore unlawful.
Initially, the government declared its intentions to withdraw from the Rome Statute that obligated it to carry out the arrest but in March a bill that was meant to enable this was withdrawn from parliament.
Therefore, the SA government could not afford a repeat of what happened with Al-Bashir. This would have created a constitutional crisis by failing to comply with the country’s laws and lawful court orders.
Russia’s ideological and historical links to the ANC as well as SA’s strong ties with the West added to the Putin conundrum. But this was always about the rule of law more than it was about ideology or foreign policy.
SOWETAN | Putin's retreat a triumph for rule of law
Image: Sputnik/Alexander Kazakov/
The news that Russian president Vladimir Putin will skip the Brics nations summit next month after “a mutual agreement” with President Cyril Ramaphosa is a momentous victory for the rule of law.
The announcement by the presidency yesterday ended months of speculation over whether the Russian leader would risk visiting SA while facing an international warrant of arrest.
It would have marked the first time that Putin would travel abroad since the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted him in March for war crimes related to the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
“By mutual agreement, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov,” said the presidency yesterday.
Whatever behind-the-scene negotiations that led to the deal are, the retreat by Putin is a significant affirmation that no one is above the law in SA, and perhaps credit to Ramaphosa for persuading him to back down.
This is precisely so because even as many sought to highlight the hypocrisy of the ICC, which is well established, SA is obligated under international and domestic laws to arrest Putin if he arrives here.
SA voluntarily joined the ICC while Russia and the US, for example, are not signatories to the Rome Statute.
The obligation on the part of SA was affirmed in 2015 when an ICC arrest warrant was out for then Sudanese president Omar al Bashir who attended an African Union assembly and the government declined to arrest him. The matter was ventilated in courts, which found that the failure to arrest Al-Bashir was inconsistent with both international and domestic law and therefore unlawful.
Initially, the government declared its intentions to withdraw from the Rome Statute that obligated it to carry out the arrest but in March a bill that was meant to enable this was withdrawn from parliament.
Therefore, the SA government could not afford a repeat of what happened with Al-Bashir. This would have created a constitutional crisis by failing to comply with the country’s laws and lawful court orders.
Russia’s ideological and historical links to the ANC as well as SA’s strong ties with the West added to the Putin conundrum. But this was always about the rule of law more than it was about ideology or foreign policy.
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